Page 31 of Echo North
“I’d like some breakfast,” I said when I had dressed. A little table unfolded from nothing and settled by the door, with a low cushioned stool beside it. I sat down to honey-sweetened porridge, plump sausages, and tangy orange slices.
“May I have some tea?”
A teapot and cup arrived an instant later, and I poured out a cupful and took a sip. I nearly spat it out.
Whatwasthis? I raised the cup and took a hesitant sniff—it smelled like dirt with a hint of charcoal, which would explain the taste. I laid it hastily down again, and wondered if it was possible to teach a magical house how to make a proper cup of tea.
Breakfast over, I stepped out into the hall. “Bring me to the wolf,” I said, and started walking. The floor shifted under my feet, and I found myself trudging through a corridor of fine white sand. It slipped into my shoes and clung to the hem of my skirt. I turned a corner and came face to face with the obsidian door. Whispers and music echoed from behind it—the wolf was in there. Remembering.
I put my hand on the smooth black surface. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to my being there than simply to help him care for the house. Could I stop him from dying? Halt the hands of that strange clock and free him somehow? There had to be answers somewhere in this rambling collection of magical rooms. When the wolf wasn’t with me, I could look for them.
And where better to look for answers than a library?
I tapped my fingers against the obsidian door and turned away, telling myself it was my promise to the wolf that was keeping me from going back inside, and not my gnawing fear of the strange and terrible room. I gave the house its next command.
IWASN’T BRAVE ENOUGH TOtry a book-mirror that might turn out as tragic asThe Hidden Wood,so I chose one with an innocuous description about a rich young fop who liked to go on fox hunts. Perhaps I would get lucky and find Mokosh again—she had an enchanted library, too, after all, and she read so much, maybe she would have insight into the wolf’s situation.
I touched the mirror; magic curled through me.
The next moment I was barreling along on horseback in the midst of a company of riders, wind singing in my ears, banners snapping bright overhead. Laughter rang loud on the summer air. My mount’s mane whipped back into my face and my stomach leapt into my throat. I could barely catch my breath but found I was laughing, too.
A bugle sounded just ahead; hounds bayed. The landscape was a rush of green on every side.
One of the riders looked back at me and gave a loudwhoop—to my surprise I saw it was the blond man from the tavern inThe Hidden Wood.Was he a reader, too? If he remembered me, he gave no sign.
The tide of the hunt hurtled onward, and I caught sight of our quarry: the orange blur of a fox, dashing madly across the countryside, losing ground.
The men around me hollered louder. They raised silver spears high; the sun made the metal flash and dance.
The blond man didn’t have a spear.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another company of riders thundering up. One moment they were still a ways off, the next they surrounded us, a wall of glistering plate armor and naked blades. Swords pressed suddenly against all of our throats—mine included—and I glanced over at the blond man in an attempt to quell my panic. He was grinning widely around the blade athisthroat. This might be a story, but pain bit into my skin; blood trickled down my neck.
A woman rode through the soldiers in her own plate armor, a blue cloak fastened around her shoulders, a silver crown pressed into her black hair. She looked young, no more than twenty or so, but there was a hardness in her eyes that made me tremble. The hunting party recoiled from her, some of them swearing, some of them begging.
The woman just swept them all with her cold gaze and waved one hand at her soldiers. The blades withdrew, but only an inch. “The punishment for hunting in the queen’s wood is death.” Her voice was as brittle as wind rattling icicles.
“We were nowherenearthe wood, your majesty!” cried one of the young men. He had ginger hair and a scruff of a beard; blood dribbled down his neck to stain his blue doublet. I wondered if he was the book’s main character.
The queen didn’t acknowledge him. “Tomorrow at dawn, your lives will be mine.” And to her soldiers: “Take them.”
A sword hilt jabbed into my back, and my horse lurched forward along with the other members of the hunt. The queen’s soldiers ringed us tightly and herded us toward the dark line of a wood. Trees marched like soldiers, their trunks stark against the susurration of the wind in their deep green leaves. I shuddered at the memory of clawing branches, of smothering dark. But this wood was just a story. The queen was just a story. They couldn’t hurt me.
Still, fear coiled tight and sank its claws in.
The wood loomed near. The blond man glanced back once or twice, like he wanted to talk to me, but the soldiers didn’t abide conversation. If any of the men spoke, the soldiers knocked them in the head with their sword hilts or, in one case, sliced off the offending speaker’s ear. I gaped in horror as blood gushed down his neck, wondering how on earth I’d thought this book-mirror innocuous.
We rode into the wood, where dark leaves and darker branches shut out the sunlight and the sky. The men wept. The man who’d had his ear cut off passed out from blood loss, slumping in his saddle—I doubted he would make it to morning. Maybe the soldiers would let me look at the wound. Maybe I could do something for him.
It’s just a story,I told myself firmly.
But it didn’t feel like just a story.
The ginger-haired young man’s eyes grew hard, the line of his jaw determined. Like he’d expected this. Like he’d prepared for it. Had he come on purpose to infiltrate the queen’s fortress?
On we rode, on and on. The wood grew darker and colder the deeper we went into it. Glowing eyes watched us from behind the trees. Whispers and high eerie screams flitted around us. The soldiers at the front of the group lit torches, but the bright flames did very little to banish the dark.
Then all at once we broke past the line of the trees. A black tower rose before us, stretching hundreds of feet into the air—I couldn’t see the top of it. Beyond sprawled a massive city, green lights winking in countless windows.
